Electrochemical micro-sensors based on carbon nanomaterials for environmental and food monitoring.

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the development of electrochemical sensors and micro-sensors based on carbon nanomaterials with practical applicability in environmental and food monitoring to ensure human health safety. The originality of this project resides in the nanostructuration of the developed sensors with different combinations of carbon nanomaterials, which leads to remarkable electrochemical and analytical performance. In addition, the use of the cavity microelectrode and its combination with carbon nanomaterials offers the advantages of higher surface area, higher sensitivity and lower limit of detection. Three electrochemical sensors were manufactured for the detection of vanillin as food additive in commercial sugar vanilla, the simultaneous determination of ciprofloxacin, paracetamol and 4-aminophenol in artificial urine, and for the electrochemical preconcentration of traces of paracetamol in tap water and wastewater. The proposed simple and economical micro-sensors show high sensitivity and selectivity, low detection limits (in order of nM), good repeatability and reproducibility with the feasibility of the real analysis in-situ without any specific preparation of the samples.